Tracey Emin Chum Gregor Muir Takes Over London’s Troubled ICA

Gregor Muir, the new director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Muir takes over an avant-garde arts center that had to be bailed out to the tune of 1.2 million pounds ($1.87 million) by the British taxpayer. Source: ICA via Bloomberg

Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) -- As a hard-living art writer in the
1990s, Gregor Muir sometimes crashed out above a shop in East
London where artists Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas sold crude
beer-can sculptures for a few pounds each.

Today, Muir has a balconied office on the Mall, the tree-lined drag leading to Buckingham Palace. Since February, he
heads the Institute of Contemporary Arts -- a center so
mismanaged previously that it got a 1.2 million pound ($1.9
million) tax-funded rescue in 2009 and, from next year, will
see its annual subsidy shrink 36.8 percent to 900,000 pounds.

Muir drew attention in 2009 with a vivid book on Emin’s
generation of Young British Artists (“Lucky Kunst”). A
contemporary-art curator at state-funded Tate from 2001 to
2003, he moved to the commercial Hauser & Wirth gallery in
2004, and is a rare public-private hybrid in the museum world.

“I want to reinforce the idea that the ICA is a center
for provocation, that it’s the home of the British avant-garde,” Muir, 46, says in an interview at his office. He
defines the ICA’s mission as showing “the really young,
cutting-edge works.”

At the same time, grant cuts mean the ICA must “secure
the best deals it possibly can with the public purse in
mind,” he says. If a dealer can cover the cost of shipping
works or help fund a catalog, “we will ask them to do so.”

Not for Sale

The ICA just had a solo show of New York-based Jacob
Kassay, 27, whose prices rocketed at a Phillips de Pury
auction in May. His “Untitled” (2009) canvas sold for
$290,500, versus a $60,000 to $80,000 estimate.

Asked whether market success dictated the choice of
Kassay, Muir says, “It was purely curatorial: We wanted to
show this artist and were really excited to be working with
him.” Were the canvases sold while on exhibit? “The works
were not for sale.”

Muir cuts a sober figure these days. His navy suits give
him the look of a middle-aged banker, and he speaks
measuredly.

The ICA was founded in 1947 as a multidisciplinary center
by a group of intellectuals, artists and collectors. Damien
Hirst had his first solo museum show there. Author Salman
Rushdie spoke there the night before Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini
pronounced a fatwa against him. The 1979 “Prostitution”
show, where the artist Cosey Fanny Tutti posed as a porn
model, was deemed indecent, and closed after four days.

Art Asset

With the birth of Tate Modern in 2000, the spotlight
shifted. Led until last year by Chairman Alan Yentob (the BBC
broadcaster) and artistic director Ekow Eshun, the center
almost had to shut down as debts soared and sponsors fell prey
to the recession. A 2009 tax-funded bailout by Arts Council
England came with strings attached: the center had to turn
itself around.

“Gregor Muir was a strong appointment for the ICA,”
says Moira Sinclair, ACE’s director for London, in an e-mailed
reply to questions. “His wealth of experience as a curator
and director, and his passion and knowledge of contemporary
art, make him a valuable asset.”

Muir, an ex-art student and painter, says he thinks of
making a painting every day. Yet he swapped his brushes early
on for a word processor, and wrote for Frieze magazine, whose
founders now run the Frieze Art Fair. After years of curating,
his 2004 move into art dealing shocked many.

“You didn’t exactly have rocks thrown at you, but there
was always the constant reminder that you were now working for
the dark side, and had in some ways sold your soul,” he says.

Curatorial Heaven

Had he? “Not in the least,” says Muir, who calls the
gallery a “curatorial paradise” that let him take over a
massive East London industrial shed and stage shows by Martin
Kippenberger and Martin Creed.

Muir’s aim is to make the ICA a launchpad for up-and-comers. “British art isn’t as big, sexy and out there as it’s
been in its recent past,” says Muir. Artists “have come out
from under the shadow of YBA, and they have to define
themselves.”

The institute may be getting some oomph back. The evening
opening this week of an annual young-art show drew 2,000
people, including the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant, Muir says.

Tomorrow, Peter Blake and Emin will be among artists
giving talks and donating works for sale in a daylong ICA
fundraiser. Its title? “Intercourse.”

The ICA’s current show, “Bloomberg New Contemporaries
2011: In the Presence” (through Jan. 15, 2012) is sponsored
by Bloomberg LP, parent company of Bloomberg News.